Codefest

FNB Codefest is an Innovation contest run annually by FNB which includes a 48 hour coding marathon during which developers build innovative solutions to business problems. Three codefests have been held, two in 2015 and the third one in October 2016 which attracted over 250 participants who created over 30 working prototypes. A total of…

FNB Codefest 2016 Kicks Off…. in Virtual Reality. Spring Day (and a solar eclipse!), ideation and Fintech were key themes of the full day session where innovators from across FirstRand talked about how they are disrupting their businesses. [Watch further below: Our kick off for Day 0 Ideation was recorded in 360 degrees of three dimensional Virtual Reality…

The Agile Manifesto provides useful principles for improving software projects; the Codefest demonstrates some of these quite effectively. At the recent Africa DevOps Day hosted by Standard Bank I spoke about our journey in setting up an Agile-supportive culture. I shared seven lessons, three of which correlate strongly with the environment that emerges in the Codefest “play space”;…

This year we added a “Learn” component to Codefest; even ninjas need to upgrade their mastery. Ernst and Young highlights talent as one of five strategic imperatives in their latest report “Leading through innovation; The future of banking in emerging markets”. High quality IT talent is particularly scarce in banking and industry winners will be able to attract…

Anthony Hugo, a software programmer from RMB made this comment at last year’s event; it shows why the new models of motivation really work. Autonomy, mastery and purpose; these are the intrinsic factors of true motivation that Daniel Pink proposes in his excellent book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. He also argues…

Technical craftsmanship must be co-located, showcased and rewarded to achieve real breakthroughs; spaceflight and banking are no different. NASA employs the brightest people on this planet so we can learn about other planets and even land on them. Elon Musk personally phones the top grads from Harvard, Yale and MIT to lure them into his…

The coolest IT sprint in the FirstRand Group is going to new heights this year; join us to build, learn and share your cool stuff. At last year’s October codefest over 250 developers built 42 apps in a 6 day sprint from business ideation through to an intense dragon’s den including the FNB and RMB CEOs (see the…

The EY Strategic Growth Forum in Johannesburg grappled with how technology is disrupting banking; as a panelist in the forum I offered insights on some key questions. New entrants, new tech, new thinking – what does this mean for the industry and how well are banks responding? FNB’s Innovators Programme continues to drive a successful culture of disruptive thinking…

Three more ingredients for the secret sauce of a “mind blowing” event; team coaching through the night, exec sponsorship (and exec dragons) and world class tech support. Last week the second FNB Codefest saw 250 developers converge for a multi-day sprint to work on over 40 business sponsored ideas of which the winner was a kids…

“I was blown away by the energy and progressive thinking … world leading … streets ahead”; these comments from a business colleague after our second FNB CodeFest last week, read on to see why he felt that way. No matter how well you plan something or bring an expert team together, there’s a special magic…